More than 46 million people rely on food stamps to feed themselves and their families.

There is a reason why people say it is an “invisible” epidemic: chronic hunger in America may be reaching record rates, but we still can’t or won’t talk about it.

More than 46 million people rely on food stamps to feed themselves and their families. They are someone’s parents or children, they are co-workers and friends. Yet, if you ask many Americans, they will say that they don’t know anyone receiving federal assistance. They think that food insecurity is a problem that happens to someone else. Someone they couldn’t possibly know or be.

But here’s the problem: when something like hunger stays invisible, people don’t think about it very much. They don’t connect it to their own experiences.

And when Republicans slash benefits and force millions of struggling families to get by on even less, people don’t get angry when they need to be angry.

Republicans in Congress know exactly who they are hurting when they cut benefits — often, their own constituents are suffering. But they still think they can get away with doing it. After all, people who need assistance often have too much to deal with to effectively fight back. And most other people think that hunger could never affect them.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In this difficult economy, with its stagnant wages and soaring costs, the vast majority of us are one bit of bad luck away from falling into the federal safety net. We should all be fighting to protect these benefits, because we never know when we ourselves will need them. But people don’t realize that until they can see themselves standing in another person’s shoes.